102 



THE VITAL FUNCTIONS. 



birds; being furnished, like the former, with grinding teeth 

 at the posterior part of both the upper and lower jaws, but 

 they are of a horny substance; and the mouth is terminated 

 in front by a horny bill, greatly resembling that of the duck, 

 or the spoon-bill. 



The Whale, is furnished with a singular apparatus de- 

 signed for filtration on a large scale. The palate has the 

 form of a concave dome, and from its sides there descends 

 vertically into the mouth, a multitude of thin plates set pa- 

 rallel to each other, with one of their edges directed towards 

 the circumference, and the other towards the middle of the 

 palate. These plates are known by the 

 name of ivhalebone, and their general 

 form and appearance, as they hang from 

 the roof of the palate, are shown in 

 Fig. 272, which represents only six of 

 these plates.* They are connected to 

 the bone by means of a white ligamen- 

 tous substance, to which they are im- 

 mediately attached, and from which 

 they appear to grow: at their inner 

 margins, the fibres, of which their tex- 

 ture is throughout composed, cease to 

 adhere together; but being loose and 

 detached, form a kind of fringe, calcu- 

 lated to intercept, as in a sieve, all so- 

 lid or even gelatinous substances that 

 may have been admitted into the cavity 

 of the mouth, which is exceedingly ca- 

 pacious; for as the plates of whalebone 

 grow only from the margins of the up- 

 per jaw, they leave a large space with- 

 in, which, though narrow anteriorly, is wider as it extends 

 backwards, and is capable of holding a large quantity of 



* In the Piked WTiak the plates of whalebone are placed very near to- 

 gether, not being a quarter of an inch asunder; and there are above three 

 hundred plates in the outer rows on each side of the mouth. 



